From our founders: a country-based growth expansion

Friends,

2024 is around the corner, and our gratitude for the journey walked together is immense! 

Today, we celebrate 2214 LALíderes in our network who have already launched 250+ ventures impacting 150,000+ people. These ventures touch 16 of the 17 SDGs; the main ones are Quality Education, Gender Equality, and Reduction of Inequalities. These are LALíderes who have overcome numerous barriers to win scholarships in top universities worldwide. LALíderes who have landed powerful work opportunities through LALA. Lalíderes who have received hundreds of hours of support from you as mentors. LALíderes who are already inspirational role models in their communities!  

But here is the catch: Latin America needs many more transformational leaders, and our LALíderes need a much larger and stronger community. This is why—after 5+ years of refining our model— we are now embarking on an exciting and daunting new challenge: to set LALA up for real scale!

Starting this semester, we are evolving our strategy and model: we will go from being one centrally-run organization aiming to serve the entire continent, to a network of interconnected country-level LALAs! This ambitious place-based strategy is the gateway to a long-term, sustainable operational model where our LALíderes will thrive, embraced by more proximate LALA leadership, in-person programs, and locally-relevant partnerships while still enjoying the uniqueness of our pan-Latin American spirit. 

Our first Hub will be LALA Brazil, our biggest market. We are currently establishing its inaugural team, searching for its founding CEO, and strengthening the local base of partners and donors. Brazil is the home to close to three-quarters of our LALíderes and a significant number of mentors, partners, donors, and staff members. The country emerged as the natural location to refine our country-based model, and will serve as a blueprint for expansion. 

Simultaneously, we will create LALA Global, the umbrella entity that will support LALA Hubs and ensure they really become one interconnected network. Short term, LALA Global will ensure we continue making progress towards our continental vision by searching for LALíderes in Hispanic America, making strategic partnerships, growing our partner and funder networks and, crucially, planting the seeds for our first Hispanic American Hub! As we shared with our LALíder network this July, we will keep receiving applications from students all over the continent, and access to Ecosystem services for Hispanic LALíderes shall remain intact. This is our commitment, and both LALA Global and LALA Brazil will play critical roles in making it happen.

We can’t wait to catch up with all of you soon and explore how you can be an active part of this strategy!


Onwards and upwards, 
David and Diego